I participated in Nethack Tournament 2006 this year, it was a lot of fun! The old school game Nethack is definitely my favorite computer game of all time, I remember playing it back in 1987 on my Mac Plus. Back then, I loved it, but the version I had would crash at random times.

Then, years later, probably in 1994 or so, I found Nethack again on Linux, and promptly fell in love.

It took me years to ascend that first time, my first ascension was in 1999, I was so proud I posted it on rec.games.nethack.rougelike. She was a Valkyrie named sness.

After finishing Nethack, I went on to ascend a character in Slashem, which is an enhanced version of Nethack.

In 2004, I participated in the Nethack Tournament, a really cool competition where many of the best Nethack players in the world have one month to try to ascend as many games as they can. In 2004, I got 2 ascensions, and got the trophy for the Birdie.

This year, I wanted to try again, and had a fun month playing. In the end, I ascended four characters:

Chaotic Elven Wizard
Neutral Human Tourist
Lawful Dwarvish Valkyrie
Neutral Gnomish Healer.

I had a promising Chaotic Orcish Barbarian, but I was running out of time and dove for the castle, and as I was killing the water creatures in the moat, something snuck up on me and got me. I'm almost glad, because it was already 9pm on November 30th, and I only had 3 hours to finish it, which for me was probably not quite enough time. I'm quite a careful player, but not as careful as Marvin.

So, here are my trophies for this year:

The Double Top
The Birdie
and First Runner Up for highest Healer score

Yay!